What is OpenCms?

The name says it all: OpenCms is an open-source software. Based in Cologne, Germany, Alkacon Software is re­spons­ible for de­vel­op­ing and main­tain­ing the content man­age­ment system. An active community also does its part to support and optimise the system. This col­lab­or­a­tion between company and community has paid off, as there are many OpenCms templates and addons available to users free of charge. Users will also ap­pre­ci­ate how easy it is to both create and manage content with the system.

Like many other content man­age­ment systems, OpenCms is free of charge and can be down­loaded from the official website. The CMS is divided into online and offline content. Offline content becomes available for online website visitors only after it’s published. And with the help of its preview function, users are able to test out their content before going live. Editors don’t need any prior pro­gram­ming knowledge in order to set up or manage content. This is because the programme doesn’t require its backend, i.e. ‘workplace’, to be used during these steps. With OpenCms, a site’s editorial aspects are clearly separated from its technical ones. All of your web project’s content can be easily edited within the webpage itself. Another perk the system boasts is its dialogue box, which enables editors to com­mu­nic­ate with one another. Innate to its design, OpenCms’ SEO features (e.g. gen­er­at­ing XML sitemaps, keywords, and de­scrip­tions, etc.) are a further advantage of the system. Ad­di­tion­al functions of the CMS are:

• Creating and main­tain­ing content via WYSIYG editor

• A drag-and-drop feature that allows users to add and arrange content and templates on in­di­vidu­al pages

• Adding media content, such as images or videos, via a gallery function

• Struc­tur­ing all pages via a sitemap editor

• Nuanced user roles and rights concept

• Expansion and main­ten­ance of various websites

• Option for creating mul­ti­lin­gual websites

Thanks to the open source approach, tech­nic­ally inclined users are able to tailor the CMS to their in­di­vidu­al needs: OpenCms templates can be adjusted as desired so as to better fit your pref­er­ences; in­di­vidu­al web ap­plic­a­tions can also be developed with this programme. Easily im­port­able ex­ten­sions allow even less ex­per­i­enced users to quickly expand basic OpenCms features. Most OpenCms ex­ten­sions are free and can be obtained as modules, which are available for download on the official website’s download page. Here you can find templates and/or ad­di­tion­al programme functions. As well as admin and content ex­ten­sions, modules for expanding online stores or online surveys are also available. The broad selection of features makes it possible to pro­fes­sion­ally develop virtually any sort of website.

OpenCms is es­pe­cially suitable for creating pro­fes­sion­al websites with a mids-to-large array of functions. It could be worth­while looking into other al­tern­at­ives for creating small blogs, online stores, or community platforms.

However, despite this short­com­ing, OpenCms has its strengths in other areas. If it’s your aim to manage content without any specific pro­gram­ming knowledge, then this CMS proves an excellent choice–es­pe­cially when editing content with multiple editors. This is where the thor­oughly con­cep­tu­al­ised role and right systems are par­tic­u­larly handy. This pragmatic operation of this programme, which enables even beginners to publish and edit content, has made it a popular choice for both intra and extranet solutions.

And even if the community behind OpenCms isn’t as large as those of the market leaders, like WordPress or Joomla, it will non­ethe­less be able to provide you with the necessary as­sist­ance for answering questions or tackling difficult problems. For all other queries that can’t be answered by the community, a fee-based customer service programme is provided by OpenCms’ official co­ordin­at­or, Alkacon Software.

While OpenCms isn’t among the market leaders for content man­age­ment systems, working with this programme will prove that it’s more than capable of holding its own against the big dogs. In the end, however, in­di­vidu­al tastes, re­quire­ments, and your own skill level are what determine which CMS is the right choice for you.